President Donald Trump announced Thursday his intentions to exclude undocumented immigrants from the U.S. Census, who have been counted in the nationwide count that occurs once every ten years since at least 1790.

“I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate Census based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” Trump wrote in an online post on his social media platform Truth Social.

However, Trump likely does not have the authority to exclude undocumented immigrants from the U.S. Census.

Regarding the nationwide count, the Constitution makes clear reference to counting the “whole number of free persons.” The framers of the Constitution had even considered and rejected excluding undocumented immigrants from the count, with earlier drafts of the document making reference to the Census only counting the “whole number of free citizens.”

This is not the first time Trump has tried to exclude undocumented immigrants from being counted in the Census, with the president having signed a memo to omit noncitizens from the count in the waning days of his first term, an effort, however, that was immediately blocked by the Supreme Court.

Legal scholars have regularly decried efforts to exclude undocumented immigrants from the Census as “blatantly unconstitutional,” and have argued that doing so would undermine the count’s accuracy and create a “climate of fear among all immigrants.”

Nevertheless, Trump appeared adamant to follow through on his pledge, despite the wide consensus among experts that doing so could see the loss of congressional seats, decrease federal funding for communities across the nation, and deter immigrants in the country legally from participating in the nationwide count.

“People who are in our country illegally will not be counted in the Census,” Trump continued. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”